Africa Youth Accountability Network
A planned 14 month Pan African movement to connect a target of 300 young leaders across East Africa through cultural immersion, leadership, storytelling and community action.
One People. Shared Roots. Shared Future.
At the YouLead Summit 2026
Target 300
Youth leaders
target across East Africa
Target 8
EAC countries
targeted for participation
Target 6
Cross-border exchanges
planned over 14 months
Target 16+
Community projects
goal led by youth teams
Programme targets for the first cohort cycle — not results achieved. The programme has not run yet.
Who we are
AYAN connects young leaders across the eight EAC member states so they can discover their shared roots, confront hard histories honestly, build practical projects together and carry that bond for life.
Our main programme
A planned fourteen months of cultural immersion, dialogue, community projects and storytelling across the East African Community — designed around five pillars.
Young people travel into each other's communities, learn the languages, food, music and history around them, and come back able to name exactly where they stand.
Facilitated circles where disagreements are spoken out loud and worked through with neighbours rather than about them — the daily practice behind 'I am because we are'.
Each cohort leaves a place having built something: a water point repaired, a market route mapped, a small enterprise taken from idea to its first paying customer.
Hands-on training in public speaking, budget literacy, negotiation and civic accountability so young leaders can be heard clearly by the institutions they hold to account.
East African stories told by East Africans — photography, podcasts and written reportage produced inside the cohort and published under the authors' own names.
“I Am Because We Are.”
Five pillars, one idea: a young person from Kisumu and a young person from Gulu are closer than the map suggests, and this programme exists to prove it in person.
Targets and proof
Two pages tell the honest story: the numbers we intend to be judged on, and the creative work the first cohort plans to make. Neither has results yet — that is the point of showing them now.
Impact
Every target in one table — identity shift, cross-border collaboration, digital reach, community projects — with how each will be measured and when results will be published. Programme targets; no results have been measured yet.
See our planned measurementsStories
A planned hub for podcasts, films, photography and writing by young East African storytellers. It opens as the first cohort begins creating — stories will appear there as they are published.
Visit the Stories hub“I Am Because We Are.”
Ubuntu · The philosophy behind everything we plan to do
Whether you are a future participant, a host community, an organisation or a donor — the first cohort is being shaped now, and the honest version of our plans is open for you to read and challenge.